This was my submission to the 2024 Writers festival fiction competition. It’s always a challenge for me to write fiction but I like to give it a go and put myself outside of my comfort zone. Enjoy:)
The last memory by Chenin Madden – November 2024
I pull into the driveway as I have done a thousand times before. A sold sign stands rigid in the uncut grass at the entrance. I turn to face the house, yellow with white trim. Hedges surround the perimeter below bright blue cloudless skies. I look up at the house, longer than usual. I have been tasked with clearing out the household previously occupied by my Aunt for over 60 years.
I stand on the front step where I would normally ring a doorbell to announce my arrival. I resisted the habit to see if anyone would answer, knowing that it was only me and that the last of the inhabitants had left. The end of an area. The end of a generation.
I’m taken back to our last goodbye in this very spot where I leaned over my Aunts small stature, dressed in a knitted white sweater adorned with a red embroidered rose. I turn the key in the glass-paneled door and contemplate how one person’s life and memories are contained within a home’s four walls once their body ceases to exist.
My aunt was a kind-eyed woman whose presence could be felt well before you could see her. The smell of violets would linger on my clothing hours after our embrace, with any breeze grabbing the scent closer to my awareness. A simple woman who loved her family, her friends, and her animals. She always greeted you with a warm smile, a cup of tea, and a yellow container with a clear lid containing a variety of griffins chocolate biscuits, mallow puffs, and tim tams. They were placed neatly on a nest of marble-topped tables to accompany your seat next to the couch. She was thoughtful, gentle and kept a tidy home. Maybe her order was a need for control after the loss of her two sons to two different circumstances. Her need for simplicity and her desires in life were to love and to be loved.
I’m alone in my thoughts as I enter the room nearest the entrance, looking in every direction for a starting point to tackle the boxes of possessions stacked neatly in brown supermarket boxes sealed with distinctive masking tape to seal the memories.
The tainted net curtains drift in the slight breeze I created upon entering the room. Shapes of light create a mixture of shapes flooding the dark purple carpet.
I knelt on the floor taking a blunt craft knife to the top box and pierce through the tape. Cautiously lifting each flap, I revealed numerous books and cards bundled together with brown rubber bands. I untied one of the piles of cards and brushed off the dust that had accumulated from its previous location on an open wooden shelf. Cards appeared partly faded from their time on display to celebrate the occasion. One by one I take a moment with each card. Birthday, Christmas, Easter, Anniversaries, Thank you’s. My aunt remembered every event and her generosity was reciprocated.
Memories were now confined to boxes. I discarded each item to the burn pile after I gave them some attention. They will be returned to the earth and depths from which they once came, much like my Aunt.
After 15 minutes of cards and letters from various relatives and friends, my heart starts to race as a postcard of the Kingston flyer jumps from my hand to the floor. I stopped to catch my breath as time stood still. Its worn edges and faded colours representative of its age. In my mind’s eye, I see the 10-year-old version of me hand in hand with my Aunt, ready to board the Kingston Flyer. The black metal handrail cold under my palms. My nostrils overstimulated by the combination of varnish stains on the wood paneling intertwined with fumes of diesel cascading above the carriages. We sat in the arch green leather seats warmed by summer’s heat. I was in awe of this big machine and excited by our adventure to the coast. I look up at my Aunt. Her smile was as wide as mine with thin lips and light pink lipstick. No words exchanged just presence and love conversing from our hearts.
This postcard had no monetary value but evoked a memory I had long forgotten which was priceless. I took the postcard and slipped it into my handbag. A gentle breeze caught the edges of my hair surrounding my face and a soft aroma of violets embraced me in a warm hug. This is how my Aunt wanted me to remember her. This would be the last memory.